Year in Review: The Best Albums of 2016

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Andrew Gomez
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Album: 22, A Million  
Artist: Bon Iver
Label: Jagjaguwar
Released: September 30

This year i was mostly excited for this Album release. 22, A Million challenges Bon Iver fans with heavy synths and Vocoders. The album has its fair share of folky guitar and saxaphones  that pay homage to the past two albums. This album lives up to its expectations and is definitely a contender for Album of the year.

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Album: Blond
Artist: Frank Ocean
Label: Boys Don’t Cry
Released: August 20, 2016

Blond is the pop bliss that we’ve been missing. After years of waiting for this album we all hoped to press play and hear the exact emotion and obscure masterpiece we’ve been waiting to hear since Channel Orange.

My favorite thing about this album was the guitar that played a huge roll in this album embedding it among other digital age production elements.

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Album: Freetown Sound
Artist: Blood Orange
Label: Domino 
Released: June 28

Dev Hynes’ third album as Blood Orange proves he is a pop icon.

Freetown Sound offers a broad view of Black Culture using spoken-word poetry and vocal clips to craft a narrative of historically underserved people.

His first album was more of a combination of new wave and electro soul, whereas Freetown packed funk and 80’s R&B together which was more exciting to me and was a unique aesthetic that was exclusively Devonte Hynes’.

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Album: Light Upon The Lake 
Artist: Whitney
Label: Secretly Canadian  
Released: June 3

The duo of ex-Smith Westerns guitarist Max Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich released their debut album, Light Upon the Lake, earlier this summer, which consists of short, and simple songs made up of gentle guitar and bursts of trumpets.

“Golden Days” was probably one of my favorite tracks on this album because of how much i can relate to it and its one of those melancholic tunes about a relationship gone wrong with an upbeat sound, this record is filled with them.

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Album: Pool
Artist: Porches
Label: Domino 
Released: February 5

Most of my favorite albums are the ones recorded in a bedroom or an Apartment, it makes things simple and raw.

Pool is very minimal when it comes to vocals and instrumentals, but its enough to lose yourself and groove to. This is definitely my go to album for easy bedroom listening and also good to shamelessly dance and drive to. Tracks such as “Be Apart” and “Car” remind me of 80’s artists like New Order and Depeche Mode.